Theme Lab » Free Theme Releases

SongSpace – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:30:27 +0000

Today we have a free WordPress theme designed by Brad of DemusDesign. I took the coded design and ported it to WordPress. This is the first theme here which makes use of the_post_thumbnail feature to handle thumbnails and needs at least WordPress 2.9 to function properly. Other features include several widgetized areas, including a widgetized footer.

And now onto the features in more detail…

Widgetized Areas

Included in the theme are five widgetized areas.

One for the sidebar
Three for each footer column
One on the 404 template

Color Schemes

Included in the original template are several color scheme stylesheets: blue, brown, green, orange, pink, purple, red, yellow. In the WordPress theme, I decided to integrate these with a very simple theme options page dropdown.

The green one is pictured in all the screenshots. If you don’t set anything, the default color scheme is blue.

Post Thumbnails

Instead of using TimThumb like I usually do to handle resizing post thumbnails, I decided to integrate a feature that was made available to themes with the WordPress 2.9 release called the_post_thumbnail.

Simply upload an image like you usually do, select it as your post thumbnail, and it will be displayed on the site. No messing around with custom write panels any more.

Keep in mind this is my first attempt at integrating post thumbnails into a theme with the_post_thumbnail, so it may take some experimenting to get them just right.

Further the_post_thumbnail() resources:

New in WordPress 2.9: Post Thumbnail Images – Mark Jaquith
The Ultimative Guide For the_post_thumbnail In WordPress 2.9 – WP Engineer

Conclusion

Hope you all like this WordPress theme. Thanks once again to Brad of DemusDesign for the great template.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Would be especially interested to hear your feedback regarding the_post_thumbnail in comparison to something like TimThumb and using custom fields.

RS17 – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:33:24 +0000

This WordPress theme is ported from the free CSS template of the same name by Rambling Soul. It’s a dark blog theme with a custom homepage template. It supports widgets and threaded comments. There are a few other features in the theme which will be gone over below.

Custom Homepage Template

Included in the theme is a custom page template designed to be used for your homepage. It includes the following:

Gallery like post layout with optional custom thumbnails
Widgetized areas above and below the post area

To use this page template as your homepage, you’ll need to do the following:

Make a blank page called “Home” (or whatever else you want to call your homepage, doesn’t matter) and select the “Home Page Template”
Make a blank page called “Blog” (or whatever else you want to call your blog, doesn’t matter)
Go to Settings → Reading and select “Home” as your Front page, and “Blog” as your Posts page.

I used a similar technique in the Simply Minimal WordPress theme so you could have a clearly separated Home and Blog page regardless of your permalink structure.

Remember, you you don’t need a blog on your front page.

If you don’t want to use the custom homepage template, don’t worry about it. You’ll have a regular blog style layout as your homepage.

Custom Homepage Post Images

As mentioned above, there are optional custom post images you can use on the homepage template. They should be sized 185×100 (185 pixels wide, 100 pixels high).

I opted not to use something like TimThumb due to hosting compatibility issues that some hosts have. You’ll hopefully be able to easily crop the image yourself within the WordPress admin panel.

After cropping, simply input the full URL in the custom write panel on the posts page.

And save/publish, the custom homepage image will now appear on the post you selected.

Widgets

There are four widgetized areas in this theme.

Two on the homepage template (top and bottom)
Sidebar
404

The 404 template widget area isn’t pictured.

Theme Options

Included is a simple theme options page to control which pages are excluded on header and footer menus.

Depending on the length of your blog title, you may not have a lot of room for links in the header, so just input a comma separated list of page IDs you wish you exclude.

To find your page ID, go to the manage pages menu and hover over a link to edit a page. You should see something like com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=XX in your browser’s status bar, where “XX” is your page ID.

Optional Plugins

This theme has support for the following plugins.

WP-PageNavi – For numbered pagination on index, archive, and search pages. Otherwise you get boring “Previous” and “Next” links.
WP125 – For 125×125 ad management, will replace the static 125×125 ad links in the current template, or you can use widgets.
Yoast Breadcrumbs – Adds breadcrumb navigation directly below the header. Highly recommended for SEO and user navigation purposes.

Remember, these are all optional plugins you can install for added functionality. You don’t need to add any integration code since I already included it with the theme, and the theme won’t break if you don’t have these plugins installed.

Conclusion

Hope you all like the theme, let me know what you think of it in the comments.

And of course, thanks once again to Roshan of Rambling Soul for the great template. You can check out all his other designs ported to WordPress on this page.

All Orange – Free PSD Template

Leland — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:20:46 +0000

Finally, I’m releasing the losing theme from theme battle #3. In case you forgot, the winning theme was the free Tasty Showcase theme which has now been coded for WordPress.

All Orange is a simple and clean, two column blog designed by Anto. Click the image below for a bigger preview.

Keep in mind this is an uncoded PSD and not a functional WordPress theme. It’s provided as-is with no support.

Do whatever you want with it, practice your coding skills, use it on a site, whatever. As per my rules for theme battles, I won’t be coding it. Ever.

For more free PSD goodness here at Theme Lab, check out the following:

Let me know what you think in the comments! Would you like to see more PSD or HTML only themes here or would you rather just have more free WordPress themes?

Tasty Showcase – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:09:35 +0000

Finally, presenting the winner of theme battle #3. Tasty Showcase was a template designed by Brad of DemusDesign, who also coded it in XHTML/CSS/JS. I then took the coded template and ported it to WordPress. It has a ton of widgetized areas, including widgetized footers (plural).

Read on to see the features, including how to use the slider, in more detail…

The Slider

Displayed on the homepage, this Karmic Flow powered slider will display your four latest posts with a custom image should you choose.

Once you have a custom image sized 653×367 (653 pixels wide, 367 pixels high) simply input the absolute URL to the image in the built-in custom write panel.

If you don’t have an image, the theme will automatically use one of the placeholder images (depending on which slot it is) if you don’t specify one yourself. That means even if you don’t have any images, there will still be a different picture for each one.

Widgetized Areas

This theme is chock-full of widgetized areas, 14 to be exact. Here’s where they are, and what they do:

Sidebar – Four areas, one full width above, two half widths, and one full width below
Footer – Five areas, one for each column
Home Footer – Four areas, one for each column
404 Template – One area, so you can customize your 404 pages

Keep in mind the “Home Footer” areas are only used on the homepage (where the slider is). The rest of the footer widget areas are controlled through the “Footer” ones, and affect every other page on the site besides the homepage.

The above diagram shows all the “Sidebar” and “Footer” widget areas. Not pictured are the “Home Footer” areas (basically the same place as the regular footer, except on the homepage) and the 404 template widget areas.

Conclusion

I bet you all forgot about theme battles, didn’t you? I know it was a few months between the conclusion of the voting and the release of the winning theme (this one) but better late than never.

Brad from DemusDesign was kind enough to code this one into XHTML/CSS and integrated the Javascript for the slider even though I usually code the winning theme battle themes myself. This time I just did the WordPress portion. You can get the static (non-WordPress) version on his site.

I’d also like to thank Cristian Antohe of Cozmos Labs for spotting a bug on the theme via Twitter. Also a special thanks to Omar Corrales of Slimmity who tested the theme himself and provided some good feedback, including several bug fixes before the release.

Anyway, since the time RS16 was released, I got the forums back online (with a matching bbPress theme) so if you have any support questions, they go there.

Let me know what you think of the theme in the comments, I’d really love to hear your feedback.

RS16 – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:53:29 +0000

It’s been a while since our last free WordPress theme. This one is designed by Roshan from Rambling Soul, who has recently returned to designing free templates after a long absence. This theme has a number of interesting features, which will be gone over below.

Read on to check out the features in more detail…

Image-Based Page Navigation

Roshan designed this template with a set of button-style image links for the page navigation. I wanted to make sure there was an easy way to choose which image you wanted to use on a page-by-page basis, so I coded in a custom write panel to make it easier.

– home
– works
– blog
– downloads
– blog

Simply type in the name of the corresponding image listed on the right, on the write menu on each page. If nothing is specified, the “works” image will be used (which is why there’s a paintbrush on every other page besides About).

The code used to display the image links through custom fields was heavily modified from the WordPress Menu Tricks article at ThemeShaper, take a look at the functions.php file in the theme if you’re curious.

Widgetized Areas

There are only two widgetized areas in this entire theme. One widgetized area is on the 404 template, in case you want to customize your 404 page from the WordPress admin.

The second is called “Homepage Top” and located on top of the index page, so you can customize the information displayed there.

WP-PageNavi Integration

This theme is integrated with the WP-PageNavi plugin. Simply install it to get super cool numbered pagination on your index, archive, and search pages. Otherwise you’ll get normal previous/next pagination links.

Twitter Integration

Your latest tweet is displayed at the bottom of each page in the RS16 theme after you input your Twitter username in your user profile. This Twitter input box located at the bottom of: Users → Your Profile.

Thanks to Justin Tadlock for the code to add and use custom user profile fields.

Multiple Background Images

Roshan included four different post background images with different colors. Adding onto the custom write panel made for the page navigation links is a way to define an alternate background color to posts and pages, if you choose.

The different color choices are: green, gray, brown, pink. If no color is defined, the default color is green.

Thanks to WPRecipes for the code on how to get custom fields outside the loop.

Conclusion

Hope you all like the theme, despite the unconventional page navigation. It’s worth noting that there is another set of text-based page navigation located in the footer. If you want more Rambling Soul templates which I’ve ported, check out this tag page for the full collection.

Not many people have noticed, but the support forums have been closed ever since the new design was launched. Not only so I can create a matching bbPress theme for it, but also wanted to set aside some time to clean up all the spam accounts which are cluttering up the database. Hardly anyone uses it anyway, so hopefully the few that do can be patient while I set that up again.

With that said, feel free to let me know what you think of the theme in the comments, including support-related questions if you notice anything that’s off.

Newsworthy – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:06:11 +0000

Today we have an awesome news theme, originally designed by DemusDesign, which I then ported to WordPress. This theme requires at least WordPress 2.8 to function properly, and includes some standard features such as threaded comments and comment pagination. There are also over 10 widget-ready areas, including a widgetized footer, plus a custom widget for ad management.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the features in more detail…

Post Images

Featured images and thumbnails for posts are used in a number of places in this theme, including the main index page, single post page, archives, and search results. Thanks once again to TimThumb, you only need to upload one image to use in all of these places.

Once you’ve uploaded a 610×281 image, copy the full path to the image and paste it in the custom write panel. This image will automatically be resized and used in the multiple areas mentioned above.

Widgets

There are over ten different widget areas included in this theme. They are color coded in the screenshot below, click it to enlarge the image.

The following are descriptions of the widget-ready areas pictured above.

Sidebar

Tabber – That’s right, there’s a widget-ready tabber. It’s ideal for text widgets, tag clouds, and lists. There probably isn’t room for more than four or five tabs.

Sidebar Ads – This area, as you might expect, is designed for 125×125 advertisements. I’ve also included a very basic 125×125 ad widget which you can use to place the ads in your sidebar.

This widget is not limited to the “Sidebar Ads” widget, but it’s probably the best place to put it.

Sidebar Left and Sidebar Right – These are displayed directly below the “Sidebar Ads” area. It’s ideal for lists of categories, archives, etc.

Sidebar Bottom – This area is displayed directly below “Sidebar Left” and “Sidebar Right” and there’s nothing there displayed by default. It might be ideal for text widgets or a list of recent posts.

Home Left and Home Right – These areas are displayed on the homepage. By default there is nothing displayed. It’s best used with text widgets.

Footer – There are five different widget areas in the footer, with “Footer One” being the one on the far left and “Footer Five” on the far right.

Single Middle (not pictured) – This is displayed only on the single post pages, directly below the “Share This” box with the links to share the post on Twitter, etc.

Conclusion

Those who follow me on Twitter know I’ve been tweeting about this upcoming theme for a while now, so thanks for your patience while I got everything ready. I think themes like this prove that free WordPress themes are still alive, and hopefully you’ll agree with me.

I’ve tried to test the theme pretty thoroughly, but if you notice any bugs with the theme please let me know in the comments or in the support forums and I’ll see what I can do.

Jungleland – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:19:13 +0000

Today we have an awesome free WordPress theme, originally designed by Styleshout. This theme has a number of cool features and is reminicsent of the FreshPick theme, also designed by Styleshout. There are six widgetized areas, including a widgetized footer, as well as a custom widget included with the theme. It also has threaded comments, so you’ll need at least WordPress 2.7. Other features will also be gone over below.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the features in more detail…

Thumbnails

This theme makes extensive use of thumbnails, so I coded in a custom write panel to insert thumbnails into your posts as an alternative to custom fields.

Featured Image – This image is displayed next to your featured post on the main index template. It should be sized at 350×250.
Post Image – This image is displayed above the content on your single post pages. Thanks to the TimThumb script, a resized version is also used as the image under “Recent Posts” on your homepage.

For both, make sure you use the full path of the image. The images should also be hosted on your domain, otherwise the TimThumb script may not work.

Widgets

Like I mentioned above, this theme has a whopping six widget ready areas. One in the sidebar, four in the footer, and one on the 404 template.

For the first time, I also created a custom widget for the “Follow Us” links you currently see in the footer. This will require WordPress 2.8 to work, but if you’re currently using 2.7 it shouldn’t break anything.

Simply place the “Feed links” widget in any one of the footer widget areas, and be sure to fill in the respective URLs.

Many thanks to WPengineer for the code to this, which I modified slightly.

flickrRSS

This theme has support for the FlickrRSS plugin, which you can currently see in the sidebar. Here’s a screenshot of my settings in case you’d like to set them up on your sidebar like I have them currently:

Conclusion

Hope you all like the theme. It was actually a bit easier to port than it looked, considering I had already done most of the work already with the FreshPick theme. As a lot of the markup was very similar, it was mostly just copying a lot of the functions over to the new theme.

Oh yeah, and for the first time in like 10 themes, there isn’t a theme option page included with the Jungleland theme. Sorry all you theme options lovers, but I couldn’t think of any justifiable reason to include one. If there’s something specific you’d like to change, a tiny code edit might be in order.

A special thanks to Omar Corrales who was kind enough to test out the theme for me and found a couple bugs that I missed. Sometimes it takes an extra set of eyes to find these things.

Let me know what you think of the theme in the comments, but if you have any support questions please make sure to post in the forums.

Bravissimo – Free PSD + XHTML/CSS Template

Leland — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:04:39 +0000

And now presenting the losing theme from theme battle #2, again designed by Keith. I know from the theme battles page, it states: The losing theme will be released as well, but only in uncoded PSD form. I actually started coding the Bravissimo PSD into XHTML/CSS though, so I thought I’d release that as well. The coded template has no images, so just a PSD, HTML, and CSS file will be included in the download.

Live Demo | Download

Photabulous – Free WordPress Theme

Leland — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:50:19 +0000

Here’s the winner of theme battle #2. The Photabulous theme was designed by Keith as a gallery/photoblog theme of sorts, which I then coded to WordPress. This theme has four widgetized areas, including a widgetized footer, an alternate color scheme, along with a bunch of other features which will be gone over below.

Live Demo | Download

And now onto the rest of the features…

Thumbnails

Obviously a gallery theme like this makes use of thumbnail images. In order to cut down on the amount of thumbnails you would need to upload, I integrated the timthumb script into the theme. For single posts, you’ll need to upload one 467×350 image and place the absolute path to the image in the custom write panel.

Once that is done, timthumb will take that image and resize it for use on archive pages. If there’s no image specified, a placeholder image will be used on archive pages. No image will be displayed at all on the single post template.

Widgetized Areas

As mentioned above, this theme has four widgetized areas. Three of these are located in the footer: Footer One, Footer Two, and Footer Three. There is one widgetized area for each of the three columns. The fourth widgetized area is located on the 404 template, so you can edit what you’d like displayed on your 404 pages through the widgets panel.

Cufon Headings

The Titillium font is used for the blog title headings, page headings, as well as comment headings. Cufon, a fast text-replacement technique, is used to render this font on the theme.

Color Schemes

Included in the Photabulous WordPress theme is an alternate light color scheme. You might have caught a glimpse of it if you follow me on Twitter, where I tweeted the preview link a few times. Here’s a screenshot of it below.

Switching between the dark and light color schemes couldn’t be simpler, since I coded in a theme options page.

Simply select between either “dark” or “light” on the page to switch. It’s set to dark by default. If you’d like to change any specific colors, you can edit the dark.css or light.css files.

Conclusion

I think the theme turned out really well. Thanks again to Keith for participating in the theme battle and contributing the two designs to it. The “losing” Bravissimo PSD from theme battle #2 will be released soon.

This is the first gallery theme released here, so I’d love to know what you think of the Photabulous theme in the comments. If you have a support question, please post it in the forums.

Green Shade – Free PSD Download

Leland — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:48:24 +0000

We just presented the winner of theme battle #1, and as promised, here is the loser. Green Shade is a nice looking, two column blog design with threaded comments, designed by Anto. It was designed with WordPress in mind, although it could probably be used for a number of different CMS’s, once coded.

Download

Remember, this is an uncoded PSD and not a functional WordPress theme. Since this is a losing theme battle theme, as noted on the theme battles page, I will not be coding it. I also won’t be offering any support with it, so it’s provided as-is. You can do whatever you want with it though. Download it, practice your coding skills, use it on your sites, whatever.